Table of Contents

EXIT EBOOK

The New Content Marketing Benchmarks

How Content Plays a Role in Graduate Student Recruitment

For prospective students researching graduate programs, or looking to professionally develop themselves to achieve career goals, content plays a critical role in attracting and converting both new and existing prospective students. Within an enrollment marketing strategy, content is meant to be educational, informative, and engaging. It takes the shape of a variety of media formats, but the goal is to compel the prospective student to take an action that leads to a real conversion — one in which the school gains valuable information with which to communicate and nurture the prospect along the journey (with more relevant content) towards applying and potentially enrolling at the school.

Awareness-Stage Content

Top-of-the-funnel media that is about an industry, a career field, higher education, current trends, or graduate programs in general. Awareness-stage content is not so much about your school or your program, but rather is focused on the prospect’s needs, pains, interests, or goals.

Consideration-Stage Content

Middle-of-the-funnel media that is about your school or program, that enables a prospect to become more informed about your offering and value proposition. Consideration-stage content is comparative in nature, and should help the prospect be able to evaluate your programs against other competitors at a more detailed level than the awareness stage.

Decision-Stage Content

Bottom-of-the-funnel media that is intended to help a prospect be very comfortable making final decisions and/or taking serious actions towards becoming a student. Decision-stage content is action-oriented, and typically involves actions of higher commitment.

What We’re Tracking

Blog Articles

Admissions-related articles
Student testimonials
Alumni success stories
Field-specific thought leadership
Career-specific resources
Program-specific information
Popular trends/reports
How-to/instructional topics
Faculty research/content

Premium Content

Gated and ungated long-form content resources
Downloaded eBooks
Pillar pages (hosted web pages)
Videos (recorded webinars, explainer videos, student testimonials, etc.)

Landing Pages

Program-specific landing pages
Request More Info (RMI) landing pages
eBook landing pages
Video landing pages
Admissions info landing pages
Recording webinar landing pages
Multi-resource library landing pages

(NOTE: Event landing pages are covered in the Event Marketing Benchmarks section)

	Blogging Benchmarks	Blogs Active for 1.5+ Years	Blogs Active for < 1.5 Years
Average New Articles Published/Year	29.41	33.67	19.2
Average Blogging Frequency	Every 15 Days (biweekly)	15.6 Days	Every 14 Days
Average Total # of Active Posts/Year	75.53	97.25 (+29%)	23.4
Average Total Blog Page Views/Year	10,545	13,954 (+32%)	2,364
Average Views Per Post/Year	136.6	157.2 (+15%)	87.1
Average Clicks Per Post	2.68	3.7 (+36%)	2.4
Average Time Per Page View	175 seconds	192 seconds	134 seconds
% Blog Traffic from Organic Search	55.1%	57.2%	2.1%

Metrics That Matter for Blogging:

Hitting the 18-month mark matters! Blogs that are active for at least 1.5 years generate 5x more page views, 80% more average views per post, 54% more clicks/post, and 26x higher traffic from organic search.
Longer blog posts get more engagement. Prospective students are demonstrating continued interest in blog content since the pandemic, especially longer posts that are more educational, how-to, and provide deep/tactical information. Shorter posts (less than 700 words) are getting low engagement as students are looking for more answers they can find on their own in their research process.
The 75/25 rule applies. Looking at grad school blogs with at least 50 active blog posts, just the top 10 most viewed articles for those blogs, on average, were responsible for 69% of total traffic and 58% of all CTA clicks for the entire year.
- WHY THIS MATTERS: This stat points toward the 75/25 rule, which is that 75% of your traffic will come from your top 25% of articles. Not every article will be a grand slam, but you need to try multiple topic clusters and article styles in order to achieve the big wins.

If you already have a blog…

Make sure you have multiple text links and CTAs inserted throughout your blog posts to increase clicks to relevant content pages.
Identify your top 5 articles that rank for organic keywords and re-publish them with more content optimized for those keywords.

If you don’t have a blog…

Start with student-created content that is a response to a questionnaire that asks questions about their decision to enroll in your school.
Repurpose faculty content you already have.
Favor quality over quantity - few longer articles in the 1500-2000 words range will be more worth your limited time than attempting more posts of shorter depth!

	Gated Content Benchmarks	Program-Specific eBooks	General Topic eBooks	Recorded Webinars
Average Page Views	3,063	4,909	1,201	346
Average Submissions	163.7	209.9	161.6	43.3
Average Submission Rate	5.3%	4.3%	13.5%	12.5%
Average New Contacts	87.2	128	65.6	4.1
Average New Contact Conversion Rate	2.9%	2.6%	5.5%	1.2%
Average Time Per Page View (seconds)	138	155	119	117

Metrics That Matter for Gated Content:

Program-specific eBooks are best for generating leads. They generate 60% more views, 28% more submissions, and 50% more leads than the average for all gated content offers.
General content gets faster conversions. General topic eBooks are the most efficient at conversions, generating a 2.5x higher submission rate and 1.9x higher new contact conversion rate than the average for all gated content offers.
MOFU content is most common across schools. Analyzing content across the three main journey stages (awareness, consideration, and decision), middle-of-the-funnel (MOFU) content pieces were the most common, representing 58% of all views, 67% of submissions, and 70% of new contacts.
4 form fields are the most common amount of fields. Looking across all gated content landing pages, 73% of forms had only four required fields. The average number of fields was 4.1, so if you’re adding more than 4 required fields, make sure your content value is worth the additional barriers to entry.

For graduate schools with multiple programs…

Start at the bottom of the funnel with decision-stage content and work backward.
Favor general content first, then program-specific according to your program priorities.
Make sure you’re gating any existing content resources that you already have on your website to increase engagement.

For small departments with only a few programs…

Start at the middle of the funnel (consideration stage) with program-specific content resources.
Record your virtual recruitment events and re-promote them as recorded webinars.

Ungated Content Benchmarks

The following table represents a variety of ungated content pages that include pillar pages for program-specific and general topics (career/industry guides, admissions guides, etc.), videos, and resource libraries with multiple content resources (that redirect to gated landing pages). The data comes from over 85 landing pages that host the ungated content, most of which have secondary conversion opportunities* within those pages (not redirects to other pages) for prospects to submit RMI forms, register for events or download other related content.

	Ungated Content Benchmarks	General Pillar Pages	Program-Specific Pillar Pages	Resource Libraries	Program Info Page	Ungated Video
Average Page Views	1,170	1,195	436	987	2,214	300
Average # of Secondary Conversion Offers*	1.8	2.2	2.3	1.7	1.3	0.6
Average Secondary Content Submissions	17.3	35.8	9.2	9.2	12.6	3.4
Average Submission Rate	1.5%	3.0%	2.1%	0.9%	0.6%	1.1%
Average New Contacts	8.4	16.4	5.8	2.6	6.9	1.6
Average New Contact Conv. Rate	0.7%	1.4%	1.3%	0.3%	0.3%	0.5%
Average Time Per Page View (seconds)	169	194	203	117	117	251
Average # Words Per Page	2,749	4,044	4,579	913	1,065	546

Metrics That Matter for Ungated Content:

Pillar pages grow authority + drive engagement. With a combined average of 4,312 words per pillar page — 10x the average for gated landing pages — these lengthy landing pages are doing the job of increasing brand authority on specific topics and keeping visitors engaged on your website with above-average time-per-page-view as well as the highest submission rates on secondary content offers.
Video is best to increase session time. With a 50% higher session time than the average for all ungated content, video is clearly keeping prospects on your site longer, which is big for improving your SEO rankings. Want more content synergy? Place relevant videos on pillar pages to really triple down on session time and secondary conversions.
2+ Secondary conversion offers yields 2x the conversions! Ungated content pages that had 2 or more opportunities for prospects to submit a form within the page (e.g. RMI, or download related content) averaged a 4.3% conversion rate, which is more than 2x the average.

If you have little to no educational content (thought leadership)...

Start at the top of the funnel with a general topic that covers multiple programs and/or multiple career paths.
Leverage any existing pages that already rank for off-brand, industry-specific keywords, and double-down on that content.
DON’T make a pillar page out of your program “brochures” that is filled with selling points about your program (that’s not thought leadership!).

If you already have moderate to significant ungated content...

Add video and deeper content (1,000+ more words) as much as possible on those pages.
Ensure each page has at least 2 secondary conversion opportunities within the page (not redirected links!).
Add at least 5 inbound links TO your ungated content pages from other website pages, blog articles, and in your email comm flows.

	RMI Landing Page Benchmarks	General RMI Landing Pages	Program-Specific RMI Landing Pages
Average Page Views	1,409	2,266	485
Average Submissions	299.4	525.4	17.6
Average Submission Rate	21.3%	24.8%	3.6%
Average New Contacts	224.3	423.2	10.1
Average New Contact Conversion Rate	15.9%	18.7%	2.1%
Average New Contact Conversion Rate	15.9%	18.7%	2.1%
Average Time Per Page View (seconds)	123	114	133

Metrics That Matter for RMI Landing Pages

The Fab 5 rule applies. The average number of form fields for RMI forms is just over 5, which is also the most common out of all RMI forms analyzed. Hands down...this is the sweet spot for most schools!
Multi-program RMI gets the most leads, with a catch. These inquiries expect program-specific information quickly, which means you need to be ready to provide relevant content and not just the same boilerplate admissions information for any graduate program.
Keep it simple. RMI landing pages are the rare exception to the norm; they do not need to have secondary content offers on those pages. In fact, the vast majority of RMI landing pages don’t have any other content offer to convert on within the landing page, and only use redirected calls-to-action that go to separate pages for next actions.

For grad schools with multiple programs...

Make sure you don’t have more than 5-6 required form fields on your RMI forms.
Make sure just about every other website and landing page has a link that drives prospects to this landing page.

For small schools with just 1-3 programs...

It likely makes more sense to have program-specific RMI landing pages.
Limit required fields to no more than 6, if possible.